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Creative at the Tinker Table

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As our children are becoming more confident at the tinker table we have been discussing what we can do with our wood and what we can create. The boys and girls have decided to use collage materials to bring their models to life!

We have had a safety lesson remember to put your gloves on when using tools. The children did some great problem solving to see what piece of wood fits best and how many pieces required.  We used several types of adhesives to see what would stick on our collage materials best.

We have also had some special visitors today as it was a stay and play day for our families to come and join us today for some fun.

We have enjoyed using different materials today with our wood and collage resources and have created houses, planes, boats, volcanoes. The children have worked very hard and shown great imagination skills with their tinkering.  Well done. We look forward to making our next creation.

Social Studies, Technologies

The floor is lava

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Today the children played  “The floor is lava” but with a twist…

They worked together to collect different materials including:

  • Paper/card
  • lollipop sticks
  • twigs
  • Small figures
  • building blocks
  • Cars
  • Bowls

They then used the materials to design and build a stable structure together that was suitable to save the little figures and cars from the lava without it falling over.

“It needs to be up high, what can we use?”

”we can use the blocks to get it high”


The children came up with a variety of ways to save the cars and people from the lava while developing their listening and teamwork skills.

They used their problem solving skills to organise the different shaped blocks by size so that the figure didn’t fall over.

”The big ones need to go to the bottom because they will fall if they are at the top, they won’t balance”

“The bowl can go under in case he falls”

The children had so much fun making a safe structure for the cars and people using materials around the nursery. Why don’t you try creating your own at home.

Special Event

Glitter Bug

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We had a special visitor at Cart Mill today! One of our nursery mum’s came to teach us all about hand washing. Eilidh brought her special germ finding equipment to show us what happens when we don’t wash our hands properly.


First Eilidh asked us if we knew when and why we wash our hands. Of course our clever Cart Mill children could tell us. “Before my lunch/snack” “when you go to the toilet.”  “If you touch anything that’s muddy” “when you blow your nose”.
Eilidh told us about Glitter Bug. Glitter bug was shy and was hiding in the bottle. Glitter bug is a special soap that shows us what we miss when we clean our hands.

When we had the glitter bug Soap on, Eilidh showed us her method of checking our hands. We put our hands in the black tent and a UV light was able to highlight any spots that were dirty.

When the UV light was on, our hands went a purple colour and we could see the white “germs”. Next Eilidh asked us to re-wash our hands and look at the difference.

We put our freshly washed hands back in the tent, under the UV light and all the “germs” had vanished.

We loved seeing the difference good hand washing with soap makes, and we learned the importance of properly washing our hands. It was so much fun! Even Emma and Helen had a turn. Thank you so much for coming to visit  us today Eilidh!

Outdoor Learning

Blossom mud pie

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The children were having lots of fun in the mud kitchen today making lots of delicious food but they needed more ‘ingredients’ so we decided to go a local walk to collect some flowers that had fallen off the trees.


Once we had collected lots of blossom, we took it back to nursery and into the mud kitchen. The children decided they would like to make a blossom mud pie, so we got to work on the recipe. The children worked as a team to collect all the ingredients, measure, empty and fill the containers before voila! A mud pie, hand decorated with the blossom.

Once our blossom pie was ready the children took it over to our ‘restaurant’ and cut it into pieces giving everyone a bit.

”This is so yummy”
Who knew mud could look so good!

Expressive Arts

Shape and colour hunt!

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This week, the children have had so much fun collecting and displaying different objects around our nursery for our ‘shape hunt’. They enjoyed investigating different rooms in the nursery, getting really creative finding different shapes in a variety of forms!

“I have so many rectangles. There’s no more space!”

“Look, we’ve got big ones AND littles ones!”

 

“Look at all my circles. It’s like all the planets in the solar system”

Some children even used their imagination to extend their learning further, and turned their shapes into something completely different!

Other children suggested we went a ‘colour hunt next’ which was really fun! We hunted in different rooms and in the garden and found some really interesting things to sort into our colours.

 

“I’m going to find lots of purple because it’s my favourite colour. It matches my dress!”

“I want to draw my pink things.”

The children loved exploring, collecting and sorting all different shapes and colours throughout the playroom and displaying their findings to their friends. They really engaged their imaginations and creative skills, well done boys and girls!

 

 

 

 

Outdoor Learning

Cart Mill Olympics

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We have recently been enjoying incorporating jumps into our obstacle course.  To further develop the skills involved in jumping, we decided to create our own hurdles.   The hurdles were placed at three different heights to allow for differing abilities and levels of confidence. By the end of our game we were all feeling really confident and were attempting to jump the final hurdle.

As we cleared the hurdles we all clapped and cheered each other on.  Sometimes we didn’t manage to clear all of the hurdles, so we worked as a team to build them back up again.   Great team work everyone!

We discussed the importance of taking a run up first to allow us to clear more challenging hurdles. Just look how high we can all jump! Olympics here we come 😄

Expressive Arts, Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Making Suncatchers!

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The children have been really enjoying learning about the weather whilst in the garden. With the season changing we have seen lots of different weather recently! We decided to make suncatchers and hoped this would bring the sunshine back! Instead of just using coloured paper, we wanted to add some natural materials.  We went on a walk to collect pretty blossom that had fallen off the trees and any other materials we could find!

“I’ve found some pink blossom and white!”

We used sticky clear paper to stick all our flowers and coloured tissue paper to. We then folded it over and it stuck the edges together!

“I want yellow paper like the sun!”

“Ah, it’s so sticky my fingers are all stuck!”

We cut them into a nice shapes and then used all our strength to punch a hole in the suncatchers using the hole punch.

“Look, I got it, I’m so strong!”

Finally we threaded some ribbon through the hole and hung them up in the garden!  The children had great fun making these whilst developing their gross and fine motor skills.

“They look so pretty!”

Now we are just waiting for the sun to come back to see what lovely colours and shapes our suncatchers make dancing in the sun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Expressive Arts

Fun time, Junk time 😊

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Today in the Studio the children were inspired to be creative by some giant boxes kindly donated by one of our parents.

They decided to build a house complete with a back and front garden and even a chimney. The children worked well together planning how their house should look.


There was a lot of chat about what everyone had in their house and what they could use in the centre to replicate the items. Some of their ideas included;
“ look I have made the key to get into the house, I used a cotton bud and tissue paper” “I think I will make a table to have my dinner at” “ I think there should be two doors at the front “ “ The garden should have rainbow grass” “I’m going to make the grass with different colours of tissue paper” “ I want to make  a dinosaur room for my stegosaurus”  I think it’s snowing at our house” I have made a barricade to keep everyone in the back garden”
What wonderful, imaginative suggestions!

The children used team work and exercised their gross motor skills to move the big boxes to where they wanted them and working together, they were able to use their problem solving skills to keep the roof up.” Let’s put these supports into stop it falling down”  

The children loved using their imagination to make their house and spent many hours playing in it.  Great team work everybody, well done!

Literacy, Outdoor Learning

Happy Campers ⛺️

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Today, the children were talking about camping in tents and shared their some of their own experiences together in a small group.

”I have been camping”

”I have a tent in my living room”

“ I would like to go camping “

We decided to bring the outdoors in to the discovery room and build our own tent in our block area.  We shared our thoughts on how we could create this and what resources we would need to collect.

Some suggestions of what we could make or need for our camping experience were – ”a roof ”, “a camp fire”,  “torches”, sleeping bag” and of course “ food”

The children  gathered a variety of resources and began to build the tent using and exercising their gross motor skills. They communicated well and helped one another when building their tent. During this time they were able to problem solve together when they had to think and decide “how will the roof stay on ?” The children had some great ideas – “we could use cellotape”  “string” “blocks” and “pegs” . We decided the pegs and blocks worked the best .

Finally the tent was complete and the children were excited to get inside and begin to make a campfire using some sticks, stones and tissue paper. The children used their imaginations creating a variety of scenarios they have tried before such as toasting marshmallows, fishing, playing mummy’s and daddy’s and Going on a Bear Hunt.

” It’s sleepover time”

”I have made real life marshmallows on a fire ”🔥

”Fire is burny”

Later,  I was invited into the tent join the children and read one of our favourite stories – The Tiger Who Came to Tea before we snuggled down cosy for our sleep in our tent! ⛺️ Goodnight campers! See you in the morning!⛺️

Digital Technology, Technologies

Our Maze Adventure

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Today in the Discovery room we have been busy learning about ‘what is a maze?’

We had a think about it and decided we should write down what we thought it was. 🤔 Here are some of our mind mapping ideas-

“It is round and you find your way out.”

”A maze is something you go in to.”

“You have to get in one way and another way out.”

The first thing we decided to do was look at different types of mazes and have a go trying to solve them out using our fingers to work our way around them and then we tried to follow it using our pens .

“These can be tricky!”

“Watch out for those dead ends!”


“My bee  is going to get the  flower”

We had so much fun exploring our mazes that we decided to create one for our Bee Bots, using our wooden blocks in a pattern.

First we created a route by using the wooden blocks to mark out the path. We used all our problem solving skills to identify and remove the blocks that wouldn’t work with our route until our maze was complete – not forgetting to add in some dead ends to make it a bit more tricky!

We placed the Bee Bots on the green circle that symbolised green is for go and start. The children pressed up, down, left, right buttons while counting the number of times the Bee Bot moved to direct him all the way through the maze.

The children had lots of fun and were developing their navigation, co-ordination, problem solving skills, social skills by taking turns and working as part of a team, following and giving instructions and developing their language skills by suggesting ideas and supporting each other. They also showed their ICT programming skills by programming the bee-bots to follow the route round their maze.

Why not give it a go at home, you can draw or make one and if you are lucky enough to have a remote control toy, you could see if it can get through the maze. We hope you have an a-mazing time!😊

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